but we shall fall gracelessly, and love as fools do
by Ominous Owlet
Summary: Lena's smile has always done funny things to Kara's insides, like her heart is dancing around down in her stomach somewhere, and if people could stop trying to kill them while Kara works out what it means, she'd appreciate it.
1. Chapter 1

Kara loves the rain. There's something cleansing about it, something soothing about the constant steady rhythm beating down on the streets below. True, it makes flying less fun and undercuts her Supergirl pose slightly when her hair's plastered to her head and her cape hangs limply behind her, but it's a trade-off Kara takes happily. It's not like there's much call for her Supergirl pose on nights like this; the people of National City, citizens of a desert city as they are, are almost entirely unused to the steady downpour, and most of them take it as a sign to stay inside. Even the criminals are less active tonight, leaving Kara with more free time than she's used to.

There's only so long one can fly around blinking water out of one's eyes, though, and after a few circuits of the city that reveal nothing of interest, Kara alights on a balcony to take a short break. She chooses it at random, she tells herself, and the fact that she recognises it after she lands is a total coincidence. It's not like she went looking for L-Corp's distinctive shape among the other skyscrapers, and if she just happens to choose the balcony attached to Lena's office, it was out of subconscious familiarity rather than any overt desire.

The office is empty and dark, anyway, and even the odd art installation on the wall is dimmed. Disappointment curls in Kara's stomach only briefly before she quashes it, telling herself that she's glad that Lena's not there, that she's apparently gone home at something approaching a reasonable hour for once.

With nothing in the building to distract her, Kara turns back to the city. She floats herself up until she can settle on the railing, letting her legs dangle out over the drop as she gazes out at the lights that shimmer in the rain. She picks out a tiny figure on the ground as he dashes from one sheltered spot to the next, shielding himself with his briefcase until he finally manages to flag down a taxi. She idly tracks the glow of its headlights as it winds its way through the streets, switching to another car once the first one's drifted out of view. She sits there following that pattern, watching as the tiny lights wend their way through the city like ants in an anthill as the wind plucks at her cape and her hair and the rain fills a puddle in her lap, until,

"Aren't you cold?" a voice asks from behind her, and Kara flinches so hard she nearly falls off the balcony. She'd been lost in her own head, not listening to anything other than the soft susurrus of the rain and the wind, and hadn't heard anyone approach. She glances over her shoulder once she's regained her equilibrium to see Lena leaning against the now-open door with a curious smile. Her hair is loose and curling around her shoulders, and she's standing short enough that Kara can tell she's kicked her heels off. She looks softer like this, with the wind tugging gently at her hair and her eyes glittering in the reflected light of the city. She looks less the ruthless Luthor who'd crushed her competitors with a smile, and more like Lena, who'd unwound herself on the floor of Kara's apartment in a dress that cost more than Kara's rent, drinking wine and telling stories of her disastrous college days.

"Le—Ms Luthor. I didn't know you were still here," Kara says as she twists through the air until she's standing on the balcony properly, going for her usual Supergirl confidence but remembering at the last second that she's still soaked through and looking distinctly less impressive than usual.

"I was in the lab," Lena tells her, looking faintly amused as Kara fidgets. "I was about to go home when security let me know I had a visitor." She nods her head towards a camera that Kara hadn't noticed, nestled up in a dark corner where the roof meets the windows of the office. It's an odd precaution, given how high up they are, but after the number of attempts on Lena's life, perhaps an understandable one. "Did you want me for something?"

"No," Kara says, then realises how that sounds. "I mean, not specifically. I didn't _not_ want you. I was just…" She makes a swooping gesture with her hand. "Patrolling. You know."

Lena glances up at the murky sky and raises an eyebrow. "Nice night for it?" she asks, but Kara can see the smile she's trying to hide.

"Well you know the saying, 'neither rain nor sleet nor snow…'" Kara says, and then winces internally. Something about Lena has always thrown her ever-so-slightly off-balance, like she'd missed a step, and the first victim of the weird swooping feeling in her stomach is usually her composure. "I mean, I know that's postal workers but the principle still applies, right?"

Kara's babbling and she knows it, can feel the blush creeping up her cheeks that's completely at odds with the whole Supergirl mystique she likes to convey. Lena's smile is hovering somewhere between amusement and fondness, and there's a spark in her eyes that makes Kara's stomach flutter in a not-unpleasant way. Somewhere in the back of her head Kara can hear Alex laughing at her, and she's actively resisting the urge to throw herself backwards off the balcony before she dies of embarrassment.

And then the building explodes.

Not the whole building, she finds out later. Not even the whole floor; the blast is centred on Lena's office, but in the moment, with the shockwave rocketing towards her, Kara's half convinced that someone's bombed the whole block. Lena is thrown forward, towards her, but Kara moves quickly enough that she's grabbed her around the waist and flown backwards out over the balcony before Lena's had time to react.

Kara scans the other floors quickly, but it's late and the only other people there are two security guards on the ground floor who have the good sense to run outside when the building starts to shake. Lena is trembling in her arms, and it takes Kara a second to realise that it could be less from the shock than the fact that they're thirty stories up and being pelted by rain. She fumbles briefly with her cape, trying to wrap it around her passenger without loosening her already-awkward grip, and she's relieved when she manages it and Lena's shaking eases.

Her relief is short-lived, however, because now she's had a moment to assess, Kara can smell the sharp tang of blood in the air, can feel a wetness against her forearms that's too warm to be the rain.

"Lena, are you okay?" Kara asks, squinting at her as best she can with the awkward angle. Lena's bones are all intact, but her back is peppered with little bits of debris that almost sparkle in Kara's x-ray vision. Kara tries to crane her neck over Lena's shoulder to get a better look, but her cape is in the way, and when she inadvertently loosens her grip, Lena's arms tighten around her neck and she whimpers in pain.

"Hurts," she hisses into Kara's chest, and Kara tilts them backward, manoeuvring so Lena is laying on top of her, allowing her to shift her arms without risking Lena slipping.

The new position lets Kara lift her cape an inch, and as she sweeps Lena's hair out of the way she realises with some alarm that, under the shredded remains of Lena's shirt, one of the larger metal shards actually _is_ sparkling with a faint blue light. She also realises that there's quite a bit more blood than she'd thought. Lena is shaking again, her breaths coming in quick, pained gasps that wash across Kara's throat, and her heartbeat is fluttering in Kara's ears. The wail of approaching sirens is bouncing off the glass of the skyscrapers, the rattle of falling debris is echoing from the broken building behind her, and Kara notices with growing panic that Lena is slowly going limp in her arms. The wind is howling at her and the rain is stabbing into her skin, and with her heart pounding in her throat and a painfully familiar dread curling in her stomach, Kara does the one thing she's always done when she's feeling overwhelmed.

She closes her eyes and listens for Alex.


	2. Chapter 2

**an: sorry about that, chapters should look fine now. the first one uploaded fine so i didn't check the others, my bad =p**

* * *

Kara flies into Alex's apartment fast enough that her hanging pictures rattle precariously as she passes, and she only just manages to stop in time to avoid hitting the wall opposite. Alex is waiting for her, phone in one hand and medical kit in the other, because her sister is nothing if not prepared for anything, including late-night explosions and a superhero swooping through her balcony door with an injured Lena Luthor. Alex is alone, which makes sense considering how late it is, but it still feels wrong to Kara's panicked brain. There should be half a dozen people, frantic and shouting 'stat' at each other, not one Alex with sleep-tousled hair and rumpled pyjamas, watching Kara rocket into her apartment with a mixture of concern and alarm.

Lena's properly unconscious now, her arms limp around Kara's neck, but her heartbeat is still a rapid staccato in Kara's ears, and as she follows Alex's pointed finger and eases her as gently as she can down onto the kitchen island – recently swept clear, if the fruit scattered on the ground is any indication – Lena's eyes flutter and she groans softly.

"What happened?" Alex asks, shifting Lena into an approximation of the recovery position and peeling her sodden, ruined shirt away from her back with a gloved hand. It's shredded enough that she doesn't even need to cut it, and Kara blushes and fights the ridiculous urge to turn around when the bra underneath it – looking similarly ragged – snaps apart as Alex slides a finger under the band to check the skin beneath it.

"I don't know, we were just talking and her office exploded," Kara says, vibrating with anxiety and trying to watch over Alex's shoulder without dripping on her. She's only moderately successful, and Alex only tolerates it for a moment before shoving her away and digging through her kit for a small torch, passing it to Kara.

"Hold this, I need my hands," Alex orders, squinting at Lena's injuries and prodding at her back carefully. The harsh white light throws the damage into sharp relief, and Kara winces at the sight of the marred skin. Alex, oblivious to Kara's distress, takes a second to nudge her out of the way with her hip and hooks her foot around one of her bar stools, dragging it close enough to sit on. "How close to the blast was she?"

"I'm not sure. More than five feet, less than twenty." Alex looks up at her and raises an eyebrow, and Kara puts her free hand up defensively. "I don't know where the bomb was! I was…distracted."

"'Distracted', right," Alex mutters, rolling her eyes and returning her attention to her patient. "Grab the black pouch out of my kit."

"Is she gonna be okay?" Kara asks, unrolling what turned out to be an instrument set and leaving it within Alex's reach before moving to the other side of the counter. She knows that if she keeps hovering over her sister's shoulder, Alex will kick her out, and the thought of leaving Lena makes her insides twist unpleasantly.

"She shouldn't be unconscious," Alex says, talking more to herself than Kara as she gently wipes the worst of the blood and grit away. "None of these are deep enough to cause the kind of blood loss that would knock her out this quickly. It could be the shock, but…" She sounds dubious, and Kara can understand why. Lena had treated getting thrown off her balcony as a minor inconvenience, Kara can't imagine her fainting from emotional stress.

"Maybe that has something to do with it," Kara offers, pointing at the piece of metal that's still glowing dully. The skin around it is red and swollen, and it looks like it's trembling in time with Lena's heartbeat.

"Maybe," Alex agrees distractedly. She pokes at the area around it, then yelps and pulls her hand back quickly. "It stings," she mutters, examining her finger. "Okay, that's coming out first. How deep is it?"

Kara squints at the shard with her x-ray vision. "Maybe three quarters of an inch? It's in the muscle but not much further."

"Good. Put your hand here," Alex tells her, guiding Kara's hand onto Lena's shoulder. Her skin is chilled to the touch and Kara fervently hopes it's from the rain, not something worse. "Just hold her still, okay? This is probably gonna hurt."

Kara nods and grips Lena's shoulder as firmly as she can without risking a bruise. Alex selects a large pair of tweezers from the kit at her elbow, prods around the shard gently, then moves to grip the strange metal.

The moment the tweezers touch the shard, Alex drops them with a pained cry, recoiling with enough force to overbalance the stool she's sitting on. Her reflexes kick in quickly enough to keep her on her feet, though she staggers slightly and has to grip the counter for support.

"Alex! Are you okay?" Kara askes, alarmed, and Alex nods, though she's frowning and rubbing her hand.

"It _really_ stings," she repeats, stripping her glove off to survey the damage. There's an angry red imprint on her fingers, raised and in the shape of the tweezers she'd been holding, and she winces when she rubs it. "That has to come out _now_."

"Let me try," Kara offers as Alex reaches for the tweezers again, and Alex wavers for a moment before giving in with a nod.

"Gloves," Alex reminds her as they swap positions, and Kara scowls at the delay but complies.

Once her hands are appropriately covered, Kara gives the shard an experimental poke. The contact sets off a weird tingling sensation in her finger, like the time a teenaged Alex had made her fish her hair straightener out of the bath without unplugging it first and she'd shorted the power for the whole house, but it doesn't burn her skin the way it did Alex's.

"Okay?" Alex asks, and Kara nods. It's an odd sensation, but it's not painful. "Good. Just pull it straight out."

"Okay. Ready?" Kara asks, feeling suddenly nervous, but Alex nods. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Kara reaches forward and plucks the shard out of Lena's skin.

The reaction is immediate. Lena opens her eyes with a gasp that makes Kara jump, and she immediately tries to sit up. Alex catches her flailing hands gently, and Kara's free hand – the one not holding the alien metal as far away from the humans as possible – goes immediately to her shoulder to hold her still. Lena fights their hold briefly, her bare feet scrabbling for purchase on the wet countertop, until she twists the wrong way and gasps in pain. She stills, but her eyes keep darting around the room, panicked and unseeing, and Kara moves to the other side of the counter, tossing the metal shard in the direction of the sink as she goes and kneeling down to Lena's eye level. She strips off her gloves with a touch of superspeed and takes Lena's hands, squeezing them gently as Alex shifts aside.

"Lena! Lena, it's okay. Look at me. It's okay, you're safe," Kara says, repeating it like a mantra until Lena's eyes flick between her and Alex and recognition washes over her face.

"Supergirl," she breathes, her eyes softening. "Alex. What happened?" She tries to roll onto her back, but doesn't get far before she stops with a pained groan.

"Careful, you're hurt," Kara cautions, but there's no heat to her words. She'd expected the flood of relief at seeing Lena alive and awake again, but the intensity of the feeling surprises her. She hadn't realised how scared she was, and in the absence of that fear, she's having trouble keeping the smile off her face.

"What happened?" Lena asks again as Alex moves behind her and leans down, resuming her examination of her injuries.

"There was an explosion at L-Corp." Lena stiffens and opens her mouth, but Kara anticipates her next question and goes on quickly, "No one else was hurt. I checked."

Lena lets out a long, slow breath as some of the tension visibly leaves her, and Kara realises suddenly that not only is she still holding Lena's hands, but her thumbs are both rubbing little arcs over her skin. Lena has made no move to withdraw from Kara's grip, and Kara finds that it's less awkward than she expected.

Following rapidly on the heels of that revelation is the realisation that she can see quite a bit more of Lena than she's used to. The front of Lena's blouse held up slightly better than the back, but the fact that Alex had mostly torn it open means that the only things holding it in place are some particularly stubborn threads and the fact that it's still wet enough to cling to the curves of her body. Kara's eyes involuntarily track the path of a tiny droplet of water as it slides over Lena's throat and down along the dip of her collarbone, and it's not until Alex pokes a sensitive spot and Lena flinches that Kara manages to tear her gaze away, surprised to find that her mouth has gone dry.

Inwardly shaking herself and pushing whatever _that_ was to the back of her mind, Kara pulls her eyes back to Lena's face and finds that her friend is watching her with a gentle, almost awestruck smile.

"You saved me," Lena says softly, her eyes glittering in the low light. "Again."

"Always," Kara whispers, squeezing her hands gently. She has the sudden, mad urge to bring Lena's knuckles to her lips, to brush a kiss across her skin, and she's halfway through the motion before she catches herself and freezes, trying to disguise the movement as a shift in position. Judging by the way Lena's eyes flick from their joined hands to Kara's lips and back, she's not successful.

"Speaking of L-Corp," Alex says from the other side of the counter, and Kara jumps slightly. She'd almost forgotten that her sister was there. "You should head back there, Supergirl." There's a subtle emphasis on the last word, and she's shooting Kara her pointed you-just-did-a-thing-that-we'll-discuss-later look. "I'll send some agents to meet you, but they're not gonna get there before the local cops, and if the bomb was alien-made I don't want them stumbling on something that might hurt them."

The thought of leaving Lena, injured as she is, feels wrong on some very deep, visceral level that Kara's too wound up to explore just yet, and Kara tries very hard to communicate that to Alex without actually saying it out loud.

Alex rolls her eyes. "I can hold my own torch, Supergirl. We'll be fine. Go make sure I don't get any other patients tonight."

Kara glares at Alex for another beat, but annoyingly, she's right. "Fine," Kara huffs, standing and reluctantly releasing Lena's hands. "Put your comm in, though," she adds, and Alex rolls her eyes again but complies.

"I should go with you," Lena says, moving to sit up again only to be halted by Alex's hand on her shoulder.

"You're staying here," she tells her, pushing her gently back down. "You can't feel it yet, but I'm not done digging bits of your office out of your back."

"I need to—"

"You need to let me patch you up," Alex interrupts her, using her the-recruit-said-something-dumb tone. "Most of these won't need stiches, but if you let them get infected, getting blown up will be the least of your worries." She pokes something for emphasis that makes Lena flinch and frown over her shoulder, but it obviously works because her posture loosens, and she stops pressing against Alex's hand.

Kara smiles down at her in what she hopes is a reassuring way. "I'll be on comms. You'll know straight away if there's a problem."

"Thank you," Lena murmurs, and when she smiles back, Kara's heart does a warm little flutter in her chest that stays with her even after she throws herself back into the rainy sky.


	3. Chapter 3

Even through the blurred outline of several other buildings, Kara can tell that L-Corp is a mess. Every window within two storeys of Lena's office is shattered, though the structure itself seems relatively sound. The plaza out front is a hive of activity, but there are relatively few human-shaped blobs actually inside, from what Kara can see with her x-ray vision as she's flying towards it.

She doesn't have long to dwell on that, though, because as she draws closer, the wail of the sirens is joined by the unmistakable sound of someone screaming. She hones in on the source, alarmed to realise that it's coming from what remains of Lena's office, and swoops towards it.

Inside, she finds a man with an engineer's ID clipped to his hi-vis vest kneeling on the floor, screaming and clawing at his hand. Next to him is a police officer in a hard-hat, one hand wrapped around the engineer's wrist, the other clutched to her chest like she's in pain. She looks up as Kara lands, startled, but her expression quickly morphs into one of relief.

"Supergirl!" she calls, panic lacing her tone. "He tripped, I can't get it out. He won't stop screaming!" She forces the man's hand towards Kara, fighting to hold him still, and Kara sees the same glowing shard that she'd pulled out of Lena's back in his hand. It much smaller than the other fragment, just a splinter in comparison, but it's obviously having the same effect.

Kara is crouching beside them in an instant, gripping the man's wrist as firmly as she dares and reaching down to yank the splinter out. The moment she does, he falls silent, though his breathing remains laboured. The skin around the small wound is red and angry-looking, and Kara leans down to blow gently on it with her freeze breath, trying to keep the balance between cold enough to sooth but not so cold she gives him frostbite.

It obviously helps, because his pulse settles, and Kara realises that he's not breathing hard so much as panting "thank you" over and over.

"You're welcome," she says with a distracted smile, and turns to his companion. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she says, looking slightly awestruck. "We were up here checking the structural integrity and he tripped. He must have landed on that when he put his hand out to stop himself. I tried to get it out, but…" She shows Kara her hands, palms up. Her fingertips are criss-crossed with burns in a pattern that tells Kara that she tried to pull the splinter out more than once, despite the pain.

"Here," Kara offers, and takes the officer's hands, blowing on the burned fingers gently with a touch of freeze breath.

"Oh, th-thanks," she stammers out, her heartbeat tripping in her chest and her face colouring slightly. "I'm Alicia, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Alicia," Kara says with a smile, but only part of her attention is on them. Immediate problem solved, she's started scanning the room, and is alarmed to see more of the same shards scattered throughout the other debris. They don't glow unless Kara looks with her x-ray vision, and even then they're not as obvious as the ones Kara had taken out of the two humans. Even the splinter pinched between her fingers is starting to darken, the blue glow fading to look like nothing more than an ordinary piece of metal.

"Weird," Kara mutters to herself, but she doesn't have time to dwell on it. Movement next to her draws her eyes, and she watches as Alicia shifts her weight, trying to move from crouching on her knees to sitting with her legs crossed. Kara's instincts shift her into superspeed, and she doesn't realise why until she sees that the officer's hand is descending toward another shard of the strange metal on the floor.

Kara catches her wrist quickly, and ends up supporting most of Alicia's body weight with her arm. "Don't move," she cautions as Alicia gasps.

"O-okay," Alicia breathes, and Kara reaches down to move the danger away. Scanning around quickly, Kara realises there are a number of other shards alarmingly close to the two humans, and makes a quick decision.

"I have to pick you both up for a moment," she says, and Alicia inhales sharply near her ear. "Is that okay?"

"Yes," Alicia answers quickly, while the engineer just nods warily.

"Great!" Kara says with a smile, scooping Alicia up into a bridal carry and swooping towards the door. Lena's couch is closer and mostly free of debris, but the thought of a stranger sitting on what Kara thinks of as Their Couch is so wrong that she doesn't even consider it. Instead, she deposits her passenger near the door, where she can't see any alien metal, then zooms back to get the engineer and sets him down beside her.

"I need you both to stay here and don't move," she tells them. Alicia sounds almost breathless when she agrees, and her companion nods again.

With the humans relatively safe, Kara starts on her task. Using as much superspeed as she dares in the broken office, she swoops around gathering as many pieces of the odd metal as she can find, even darting outside into the rain to retrieve the shards embedded in the balcony, and deposits them in a pile in the middle of the room.

By the time she's done, she turns around to find that they've been joined by a number of familiar faces, including,

"Winn, hi," Kara says with a smile, spotting her friend leading a group of agents into the room, carrying both his satchel and a metal briefcase. "Took you long enough."

"Hey, at least _we're_ dry," he points out, and Kara just barely manages to resist the urge to poke her tongue out at him. "Can we…?"

"Oh, yeah, you can come in now. I've got most of it. Just…" Kara uses her boot to drag a line around her pile. "Don't go past this line. This stuff stings."

"Yeah, Alex warned us," Winn says as the agents file into the room. Winn watches for a moment as they begin setting up his equipment, but once he's satisfied they know what they're doing, he motions Kara over to the corner, away from the others.

"Alex was kind of light on details. What happened?" he asks, and Kara launches into an explanation, though she leaves out the hand-holding and unintentional knuckle-kissing.

"Is Lena okay?" Winn asks when Kara's finished her story.

"I think so. I left her with Alex, and she hasn't contacted me, so I'm assuming she hasn't gotten worse."

"Good. What about those two?" Winn askes, nodding over her shoulder to where Alicia and the engineer are talking to one of the agents.

"I think they're fine. The engineer had a splinter in his hand, but I got it out, and Alicia only touched it a little bit. They both have burns, but they're minor."

"Well that's something. I'll get them checked out, just to be sure, though."

Kara nods, running a hand through her hair and grimacing when she realises that it's still dripping wet. "It's nights like this I wish this suit was waterproof," she murmurs with a sigh, and Winn pulls a face.

"It's everything-else-proof, I did my best," he says, pouting theatrically. "Besides, some people don't mind you looking all bedraggled." He looks past her with a sly little grin and asks, "What'd you do to her?"

Kara frowns and glances over her shoulder, confused to realise he's looking at Alicia. "Wha—nothing. Why?"

"She's _swooning_ ," Winn answers in a sing-song, fluttering his eyes, and Kara blinks at him. "Classic Supergirl swooning."

"She's not—I don't make people swoon. There is no swooning."

"There's some swooning. I personally know of one particular L-Corp executive who swoons every time you open your mouth."

"Lena doesn't _swoon_ …" she starts, confused, but there's a warm, fluttering feeling in her stomach and she can feel her face going red. Winn's grin grows when she trails off, and she shoves him lightly. "Don't you have science to do?"

"I do indeed," he agrees, turning to survey the room. He moves to crouch down next to the pile Kara made and she tenses, ready to pull him away if he gets to close. He doesn't, though, just mutters to himself for a moment then digs through his satchel, pulling out what looks like a pair of rubber barbeque tongs. He reaches towards the pile, and Kara starts forward, concerned.

"Winn…" she warns, but he waves her off and carefully prods the pile.

Nothing happens.

"Huh," he says, and does it again. Again nothing happens, and Kara lets some of the tension drain from her shoulders. Winn uses the tongs to pick up a larger shard carefully, and brings it closer to his face you get a better look. "Well that's weird," he mutters to himself, turning the metal this way and that, examining it from every angle. Then, before Kara realises what he's doing, he drops the shard into his free hand.

"Winn!" Kara cries, darting forward, but by the time she's reached his side, he's already dropped the shard with a yelp. It flares blue when it touches his skin, but fades before it hits the ground. Winn's hand shows only a faint red outline where the metal had touched it, and he rubs it curiously while Kara hovers anxiously at his shoulder.

"I think it's a type of electrical discharge," he says, mostly to himself, prodding at the shard with his tongs. He goes to poke it with his finger, but Kara catches his wrist before he gets there. Winn frowns at her briefly but doesn't try again. "It only seems to happen when it comes into contact with something organic. Was Alex using metal tweezers?" he asks Kara, and she nods. "But the rubber's fine, so it can be insulated against…"

He trails off, but before Kara can prompt him to keep explaining his theory, one of the other agents calls out from the other side of the room.

"Agent Schott, I've got a phone here," he calls, holding the device up. The screen is lit up with a new message, and Kara recognises it with a start.

"That's Lena's," she says, crossing the room quickly. The phone is battered but working, but Kara is more interested in the message preview on the screen. It's from a blocked number, but the lines that Kara can see in the preview are enough for her to snatch the phone from the agent, typing in the passcode Lena had trusted her with months ago. The agent shoots her a surprised look but Kara ignores him, too focused on the message to come up with an excuse for why Supergirl can unlock Lena Luthor's personal phone.

 _"Lena Luthor,"_ the message reads, " _creator of Devices foul. We have brought destruction upon you as you sought to bring destruction upon your planet. The scourge of your Technology must cease. You install vile Machines into the young and the sickened, you meddle with the crops of the hungry. Though it sorrowed us, your death was necessary to halt your devastation, lest you bring ruin unto your people, and doom upon all the world."_

Kara can hear the phone creaking under her fingers and loosens her white knuckled grip. She's angry, her rage at this unknown assailant simmering low in her stomach, but under it there's a chill running down her spine at the dispassionate, ruthless reasoning in the explanation. That it was mostly nonsense is somehow worse. The claim that Lena is somehow working towards the destruction of civilisation is ridiculous, and the thought of her experimenting on people, on _children_ , is so utterly incongruous that Kara wonders for a moment if this is a prank, if someone has seen the explosion on the news and is taking advantage.

But it's the middle of the night, even the fastest of the news vans are only just arriving, and the message doesn't feel like a prank. It radiates with sinister sincerity, and Kara realises with a jolt of alarm that the threat in it is clear.

"Winn, I have to go," she says, pulling his attention from the alien metal. He shoots her a confused look, and she zips to his side, tilting the phone so he can see it. "If they realise she's still alive, they'll try again. They have to keep thinking she's dead."

"Go, we can manage here," he tells her, and Kara turns, taking a running leap out over the balcony and flinging herself out into the rain. There's a little voice in the back of her head pointing out that she could easily contact Alex on comms, but Kara ignores it. There's a feeling sitting in her chest, a need to see Lena for herself, to make sure she's safe, and Kara knows with an odd certainty that she couldn't push it down even if she wanted to.


	4. Chapter 4

Kara intends for her return to Alex's apartment to be less dramatic than last time, and for the most part she succeeds. She swoops in through the still-open balcony door, looking very graceful and superheroic up until she catches sight of Lena, curled up on the couch and wearing one of Alex's flannels and a pair of sweatpants, and briefly loses control of her momentum. It's the airborne equivalent of stumbling over her own feet, and Lena's eyes snap open at the sound of Kara thudding into the ceiling, tensing up until Kara rights herself into a more familiar shape.

"Supergirl," she murmurs, the word rolling warmly off her tongue and landing squarely in Kara's chest. "You startled me."

"Sorry," Kara says, dropping towards the floor. Her heart is doing a weird little two-step under her ribcage, and she's uncomfortably aware of how dishevelled she must look as Lena's eyes flick down her body. Her gaze lingers on where Kara's skirt is wet enough to cling to her legs, and Kara feels her face growing warm as she fidgets under her appraisal.

"Seriously?" Alex says as she emerges from the bathroom, interrupting the moment and making both of them jump. "I just finished mopping. Go do your whirly tornado thing outside," Alex tells her, pointing towards the balcony. Kara pouts and opens her mouth to object, but Alex points again, insistent, and Kara groans but gives in, gathering her cape up and resisting the urge to stomp as she goes back out onto the balcony. The rain in intensifying, the distant rumble of thunder heralding the arrival of a true storm, but the covered part of the balcony is still mostly dry.

Keeping a firm grip on the free end of her cape to stop it flaring out too far, Kara moves under the roofed section and pirouettes rapidly on the spot, centrifuging the water off her body. It's a trick she and Alex came up with when they were teenagers, but it makes her look ridiculous, and Kara finds that she's oddly pleased that Lena can't see her from where she's sitting.

Once she's relatively dry, Kara darts back into the apartment. Alex is mopping up the puddle of water Kara had left in her wake, and Kara's thankful that she hasn't noticed the wet patch on the ceiling yet. Lena is still curled on the couch, knees pressed to her chest, and she looks worn out. She's twisted her hair up in a loose bun, and Kara can see the corner of a bandage peeking out from the collar of her borrowed shirt. It's slightly too small on her, and Kara catches her eyes tracing the lines of the fabric over her chest until she notices what she's doing and jerks her gaze back up, feeling her face heat up when her eyes meet Lena's and she realises that her friend had been watching her.

"I wasn't expecting you back so soon. Have you got something?" Alex asks, coming to stand beside her, and Kara jumps. It's noticeable enough that Alex eyes her for a long moment, and Kara tries to cover it by bending down to retrieve Lena's phone from where she'd stashed it in her boot.

"I found more of the alien metal at L-Corp. Winn's running tests on it to make sure it doesn't have any nasty side-effects. Also, the bomber sent a message," Kara explains, offering the phone to Lena. She unlocks it and stares down at it for a long moment, her face impassive as she reads while Kara summarises it for Alex. She's not looking at Lena as she talks, so she misses the first quiver of her lips, but when she lets out a little snort of laughter, Kara trails off as she and Alex both turn to face her.

"Lena?" Alex asks slowly, but Lena just shakes her head and dissolves into laughter, clutching her stomach with one hand and rocking ever so slightly in place as Kara eyes her with alarm.

"Lena? What did you give her?" Kara asks, shooting Alex an accusing look. Her sister puts her hands up defensively.

"Nothing! She wouldn't even take an aspirin," Alex answers, but even as she's speaking Lena trails off into giggles.

"My tech. My tech is their problem!" she giggles, her tone bordering on hysterical. "Not even the dangerous stuff. Not the weapons, not the anti-alien bombs I'm supposedly developing in my free time. They want to kill me for the things I'm designing to help people." She dissolves into laughter again, though there's nothing even close to mirth in it, and Kara and Alex share a look before Kara moves to stand beside her.

"Lena…" Kara starts, sinking down next to her on the couch and reaching for her hand. Lena clings to it as her laughter trails of into something that sounds like a sob, and Kara has to actively fight the urge to pull her into her arms. Instead, she just eases the phone out of her grip and passes it to Alex before squeezing Lena's hand gently. "It's gonna be okay. We won't let them hurt you."

"I doubt even you can protect me forever, Supergirl. One of these days, someone's gonna get a lucky shot," she says, sounding tired and small and hopeless, and Kara finds that even thinking about the possibility makes her feel sick in a way she can't describe.

"I won't let that happen," she says, cupping Lena's cheek and tilting her head up so she'll meet her eyes. "I'll never stop protecting you, I swear." It's desperately important to her that Lena knows that, and there's something in her chest that tightens when Lena's eyes widen ever so slightly.

"You'd…" she starts, but trails off, her eyes flicking rapidly between Kara's own. Her hand is tight around Kara's fingers, and when Kara uses her thumb to wipe the moisture from under her eye, her lips part and she leans into the touch. Kara's stomach is fluttery and tight, and her skin is tingling in all the places they're touching. There's an odd itch in her spine, pushing her to lean in, to close the distance between them and—

Behind them, Alex clears her throat pointedly and they both flinch and pull back. Kara pulls her hand away from Lena's cheek, but when she tries to reclaim the other one, Lena just tightens her grip and refuses to let go. Alex eyes them both for a long moment before speaking.

"So judging from that message," she starts, deliberately breezing past the interaction she'd interrupted, "whoever sent the bomb thinks it worked and you've been killed. I say we let them keep thinking that."

"You want to fake my death," Lena says flatly, and Alex shrugs.

"It's the easiest way to keep you safe until we work out who's trying to kill you," she says, and Kara finds herself agreeing.

"It won't be for long, Lena, I promise. I'll find who did this," Kara says, squeezing her hand, and Lena's eyes flick between her and Alex for a long moment before she deflates, looking weary. It's a sharp enough contrast to her usual confident demeanour to set alarm bells off in Kara's head, but Lena speaks before she can react.

"Fine, one week," she says with all the enthusiasm of someone agreeing to sleep in a bear pit. "Where will you put me? I assume you don't want me checking into a hotel."

Alex shakes her head. "You're too recognisable to hide anywhere public. Is there anyone nearby that you trust?"

Lena's eyes cut sideways to Kara before she shakes her head. "Nobody I'll risk putting in danger if this plan doesn't work."

"You could stay at the DEO," Alex offers, and Kara frowns at her in confusion.

"There are beds there?" she asks, tilting her head. She's caught Alex sleeping on a couch in the break room before, but she's never mentioned a DEO bedroom.

"Well, I mean, technically they're cells, but—"

"No," Lena says immediately, cutting her off.

"We obviously wouldn't lock you in—"

" _No._ "

"Alex!"

"Okay, it was just a suggestion," Alex says, holding up her hands placatingly.

"I could take you to the Fortress," Kara says, and Lena shoots her a surprised look. "It's cold, but you'd be safe."

Lena stares at her, eyes wide. "You'd trust a Luthor there?" she asks softly, and Kara squeezes her hand gently.

"I'd trust _you_ there," she says, but Alex is shaking her head.

"It's too far away. We might need you on short notice." Alex frowns and rubs her head. "I guess we could put you in one of the bolt-holes." At the twin head tilts she gets, Alex elaborates, "They're like safe houses for our undercovers if the op goes bad. There's one nearby that's empty."

Lena eyes her warily. "What's the catch?"

Alex rolls her eyes. "There's no catch. They're basic, but secure. You'll be safe there."

"It's just for a few days," Kara says, smiling encouragingly, and Lena sighs and relents.

"Fine. How do we get there?" Lena asks. Alex looks pointedly between her and Kara, and Lena groans. "We're getting wet again, aren't we?"


End file.
